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[ENCYCLICAL LETTER CENTESIMUS ANNUS ADDRESSED BY THE SUPREME PONTIFF JOHN PAUL II TO HIS VENERABLE BROTHERS IN THE EPISCOPATE THE PRIESTS AND DEACONS FAMILIES OF MEN AND WOMEN RELIGIOUS ALL THE CHRISTIAN FAITHFUL AND TO ALL MEN AND WOMEN OF GOOD WILL ON THE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF RERUM NOVARUM]

Over the course of the last half millennia, an understandable, but disastrous,
thing happened to the Catholic Church. It ended up defending centralized
State power long after the State ceased to be an ally of the institutional
Church. Up until the Reformation, Catholicism was the officially
recognized, sanctioned, and supported, state religion of most European
nations. As a result, the Church had a vested interest in the continuance
of those states and their rulers in unaltered form. But, as first
the Reformation tore the Church loose from the State, then the democratic
Revolutions tore political power away from the State, and, finally, the
rise of capitalism transferred economic power from the aristocracy to individuals,
the Church, mostly reacting to these revolutionary forces, resisted the
forces of protestantism, democracy, and capitalism. Catholicism became
in some fundamental sense the enemy of human freedom and therefore found
itself on the wrong side of history.

Then comes the really sad part of the story. As Darwinism, Marxism,
Socialism, Relativism, Freudianism, and the whole panoply of other -isms
gnawed away at the religious faith of the educated upper and middle classes,
religion became increasingly a lower class phenomenon and the Catholic
Church, and its clergy, began to identify more with the very poor than
with the powerful, as it had when it was itself a powerful institution.
Exacerbating this phenomena was the fact that those countries (mostly in
Southern and Eastern Europe and in Latin America) which were most Catholic--and
thus most resistant to democratic capitalism--tended to be significantly
poorer than the predominantly Protestant nations of Northern Europe and
the wholly Protestant former colonies of Great Britain (America, Australia,
etc.). Having set itself in opposition to the free market, and taken
on the role of defender of the poor, the Church was easy prey when the
Statist alternatives to democratic capitalism came along.

This gave us the ugly phenomenon of Catholic clergy who supported Marxism
(the so-called liberation theology of many Latin American clerics) and
a general willingness on the part of the Church generally to accept the
Left's critique of capitalism as unresponsive to human needs. All
of this came to a head in the 1980s with clergy getting caught in the crossfire
of revolutions in Nicaragua and El Salvador and with bishops writing letters
opposing both the free market reforms of Thatcher and Reagan and calling
for unilateral disarmament in the face of the Soviet Union's continuing
threat. Thus did age old antagonisms between Church and capitalism
reinforce themselves in a devastating loop. In a bitter irony, the
Church itself had become a de facto ally of World Communism, which, it
goes without saying, despised religion in all its forms, but most particularly
the traditional hierarchical religions like Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity,
which were the predominant religions of most of the nation's that fell
under communist tyranny.

The story is often told, and well understood, of how an Eastern European
Pope, John Paul II, took power at this vital stage and played a significant
role in the defeat of communism, particularly in his native Poland.
What is underappreciated is the degree to which he has also sought to reconcile
the Church with democratic capitalism. His primary instrument in
this mission was the 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, a document
which was apparently strongly influenced by the American philosopher of
religion and economics Michael
Novak. Here is just some of what the encyclical says :

It would appear that, on the level of individual
nations and of international relations, the free
market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing
resources and effectively responding to needs.

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The Church acknowledges the legitimate role of profit
as an indication that a business is
functioning well.

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It is the task of the State to provide for the defence
and preservation of common goods such as the
natural and human environments, which cannot be
safeguarded simply by market forces. Just as in
the time of primitive capitalism the State had the
duty of defending the basic rights of workers, so
now, with the new capitalism, the State and all
of society have the duty of defending those
collective goods which, among others, constitute
the essential framework for the legitimate pursuit
of personal goals on the part of each individual.

Here we find a new limit on the market: there are
collective and qualitative needs which cannot be
satisfied by market mechanisms. There are important
human needs which escape its logic. There
are goods which by their very nature cannot and
must not be bought or sold. Certainly the
mechanisms of the market offer secure advantages:
they help to utilize resources better; they
promote the exchange of products; above all they
give central place to the person's desires and
preferences, which, in a contract, meet the desires
and preferences of another person. Nevertheless,
these mechanisms carry the risk of an "idolatry"
of the market, an idolatry which ignores the
existence of goods which by their nature are not
and cannot be mere commodities.

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In the light of today's "new things", we have re-read
the relationship between individual or private
property and the universal destination of material
wealth. Man fulfils himself by using his
intelligence and freedom. In so doing he utilizes
the things of this world as objects and instruments
and makes them his own. The foundation of the right
to private initiative and ownership is to be
found in this activity. By means of his work man
commits himself, not only for his own sake but
also for others and with others. Each person collaborates
in the work of others and for their good.
Man works in order to provide for the needs of his
family, his community, his nation, and
ultimately all humanity. Moreover, he collaborates
in the work of his fellow employees, as well as
in the work of suppliers and in the customers' use
of goods, in a progressively expanding chain of
solidarity.

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Authentic democracy is possible only in a State ruled
by law, and on the basis of a correct
conception of the human person. It requires that
the necessary conditions be present for the
advancement both of the individual through education
and formation in true ideals, and of the
"subjectivity" of society through the creation of
structures of participation and shared
responsibility.

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All human activity takes place within a culture and
interacts with culture. For an adequate
formation of a culture, the involvement of the whole
man is required, whereby he exercises his
creativity, intelligence, and knowledge of the world
and of people. Furthermore, he displays his
capacity for self-control, personal sacrifice, solidarity
and readiness to promote the common good.
Thus the first and most important task is accomplished
within man's heart. The way in which he is
involved in building his own future depends on the
understanding he has of himself and of his own
destiny. It is on this level that the Church's specific
and decisive contribution to true culture is to be
found. The Church promotes those aspects of human
behaviour which favour a true culture of
peace, as opposed to models in which the individual
is lost in the crowd, in which the role of his
initiative and freedom is neglected, and in which
his greatness is posited in the arts of conflict and
war. The Church renders this service to human society
by preaching the truth about the creation of
the world, which God has placed in human hands so
that people may make it fruitful and more
perfect through their work; and by preaching the
truth about the Redemption, whereby the Son of
God has saved mankind and at the same time has united
all people, making them responsible for
one another. Sacred Scripture continually speaks
to us of an active commitment to our neighbour
and demands of us a shared responsibility for all
of humanity.

In essence, Pope John Paul II has accepted, on behalf of the Church,
that economic and political life must be spheres in which the maximum of
human freedom prevails. This is important both because it removes
one more obstacle to such freedom, but also because, even as he cedes a
great deal of influence in the politico-economic sphere, he retains the
Church's, and Christianity's, claim to a predominant role in the cultural/moral
sphere. Of course the spheres overlap, and it is precisely because
the free market is an amoral system that it is so important for the Church
to reinvigorate the moral/religious sphere. Democracy and capitalism
were they not tempered by Judeo-Christian values would, in the long run,
be so destructive of the human spirit as to become intolerable to people,
which would be an unmitigated disaster. That the majority in a democracy
can do as it will with the minority does not justify it in doing so, as
long as their are moral reasons not to. But remove these moral constraints,
remove religious beliefs, and the brute will of the majority will be unchecked.
Similarly, capitalism depends for its effectiveness on the rewarding of
good ideas and capable people, but if foolish ideas and less capable people
are not only punished by the market but also left by the wayside by the
society as a whole, then the system will, and should, be judged a failure.

Pope John Paul II is easily caricatured as a retrograde conservative
figure, and on issues of church doctrine, religious faith, and morality,
this is largely the case. But the change in the position of the Church
as regards economics and politics, as reflected in Centesimus Annus, is
so revolutionary and (small case) liberal, that the caricature is obviously
inadequate. Only time will tell, but it seems possible that, as the
man who placed the Church back on the side of freedom in the civil arena,
but recalled the Church to absolutism in the moral arena, he may one day
be considered one of the most important figures in human history.
For this hope to come true it will be necessary for us all to value and
defend freedom, on the one hand, but to take responsibility for our own
actions and for the welfare of our fellow citizens on the other.

John Paul II's papacy was dramatic and historic on many fronts. Speaking of Faith explores some of the critical religious issues of his 26 years as pontiff and discusses the great and contradictory impact he made on the Catholic Church in America and abroad. Host Krista Tippett speaks with NPR's senior European correspondent Sylvia Poggioli, priest and author Donald Cozzens, and Yale theologian Margaret Farley.